


Kisses

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Chocolate, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Hand Kisses, Hugs, Jealousy, Kisses, already said fluff but oops i wanted to write it again, face kisses, neck kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6729964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite an incredibly affectionate private relationship, Fitz is still having trouble accepting that he and Jemma could engage in public displays of affection. Years of maintaining professionalism in the lab and other common spaces are proving hard to shake. </p><p>So Jemma does what she does best and devises a rather <i>sweet</i> system to encourage him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kisses

“You’d have me salivating like Pavlov’s dog if you could, Simmons!” 

“Pavlov had forty different dogs, Fitz, and this isn’t a form of conditioning. Well, alright, it may create a positive feedback association, but I’m not trying to brainwash you. Think of it as prompt, or a ...reminder. We could use anything, really, I just thought this had a certain levity to it. Besides, I hardly expected you to turn down chocolate.” 

“It’s not the chocolate I have a problem with,” Fitz grumbled. 

“Is it the actual act of kissing me? If you want to stop kissing me, Fitz, you only have to say so.” 

“Don’t even joke about that, Jemma.” 

“What is it then?” she pressed. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?” 

“Never,” he insisted, tugging her into his arms. “I just... It’s taking some time to get used to.” 

Though they'd been officially dating for weeks, Fitz was still having trouble accepting that they could engage in public displays of affection. They’d told Coulson - they’d told the whole team - about their change in relationship status but Fitz still watched the director like a sixteen year old boy unsure whether his date’s father was going to tar and feather him. It took every ounce of Jemma’s strength just to keep him clamped to her side during movie nights as he tried to create a respectable, professional distance between them. 

There was nothing wrong with their private lives: when it was just the two of them, Fitz was incredibly affectionate, as if making up for lost time. But years of maintaining professionalism in the lab and other common spaces were proving harder to shake. 

So Jemma did what she did best and devised a system. She would hide Hershey’s Kisses all over the base, and any time Fitz found one, he would have to kiss her immediately. It didn’t matter who else was in the room or what else was going on. The parameters of what qualified as a kiss were left open to interpretation, though Jemma would regret that within minutes of the system being put into place. 

“I don’t want to force you to do something you’re not comfortable with,” Jemma murmured as they ran once more over the guidelines for the system. 

“I don’t mind being affectionate with you,” he said quietly. “I’ve just spent so long thinking I had no right. In here, just us, I can begin to believe it, but out there it’s like old times and I’m constantly afraid of overstepping a line--”

“No such thing,” she said eagerly. “Not with me, Fitz. And the team will learn to deal with it. Honestly, they probably think we’re celibate the way you run away any time I even touch you on the shoulder.” 

“No fleeing the scene, got it,” Fitz said as if making a mental checklist. 

“That’d be a good start,” she teased. 

“And the - the kissing...?”

“You don’t have to do it, of course, and I wouldn’t be _upset_ if you didn’t, but... I'm mad about you, Fitz. I don’t want our relationship to start and stop in private. If you’re comfortable with it, and if the chocolate works for you, well, I’d like you to take it as motivation. Feel free to throw in spontaneous kisses if the mood takes you, but--”

“Alright, slow down, Scarlett O’Hara,” he said, affectionately nuzzling her neck. “One step at a time.” 

Jemma made sure to begin by placing the Hershey’s Kisses in places only he would find them -- in his drawer in the lab, inside his favorite mug in the kitchen -- but once the rest of the team understood what was going on, she began leaving them around more openly. A few still disappeared with no hint of romantic reciprocation (though Daisy had offered several times to show Fitz how it was done), but the team seemed to enjoy Fitz’s head-to-toe blushes enough to deny themselves the chocolates. 

He got away easy at first, always seeming to find the little foil-wrapped dollops when they were alone, so the first time he opened a cabinet during a team dinner and saw one waiting there, he froze completely. Jemma watched his stiff back, fighting a grin but also feeling slightly guilty -- was she pushing Fitz too far? Should she have just accepted that he had different ways of expressing affection in public? 

But then he had engulfed the chocolate in his fist and turned back to the table. Keeping both widened eyes on Coulson, who was watching them impassively, Fitz leaned towards Jemma and placed a light, almost platonic kiss on her cheek. But not even her cheek, really -- his tightened lips fell high on her cheekbone, about as far away from her lips as possible. 

“Ugh, _Fitz_!” she cried, throwing up her hands and standing abruptly to help Mack with the dishes. 

Across the table, Daisy snickered at Fitz’s bewildered expression. 

For a while it continued in that fashion. He skirted the edges of the rules of their agreement, offering only chaste pecks. Once Jemma grumbled something about him kissing like her gran and he turned a new shade of scarlet and stumbled over a stool in his hurry to vacate the lab. Jemma was almost to the point of calling the whole exercise off completely and resigning herself to a kiss-less existence between the hours of nine in the morning and nine at night when, during a game night with Daisy and Mack, she and Fitz soundly trounced their teammates at Mario Kart and Fitz let out a whoop and pulled her to him so he could leave a firm, lingering kiss on her cheek. He didn’t seem to notice the glances the others exchanged, but Jemma took heart from Mack’s subtle nod. 

One day in the kitchen, as they prepped their lunch during the break Coulson had taken to forcing upon them, Jemma’s grip on her knife slipped and it sliced across her palm. It wasn’t a particularly deep cut and it barely bled but she yelped in surprise and pain and Fitz panicked, dashing to the living room for the First Aid kit. Jemma had hidden a Kiss on that shelf but forgotten about it, so her heart bloomed when he gently took her hand, wiped the cut clean, and pressed kisses like warm stitches across the cut. He then bandaged it and curled her hand up before kissing each of her knuckles tenderly.

“It was only one chocolate, Fitz,” she murmured. “One chocolate, one kiss.” 

“I know,” he said, holding her hand to his chest. “But I wanted to.” 

She began to wonder if she’d really hidden this many chocolates. Had he started hiding them himself? 

After a mission for which she’d packed a few chocolates in his gear, he dropped his bag as soon as he’d stepped off the Quinjet and took her face in his hands, peppering kisses on her hairline and her ear and the tip of her nose. She blamed it on adrenaline and the fact that only May was there as a witness but enjoyed it nonetheless. 

He found the Kiss she’d tucked among the extra beakers when they were alone, so she almost called him out for cheating when he hugged her from behind and pressed moist kisses from the underside of her jaw down to her collarbone. She melted back into him, thinking perhaps this was pushing Coulson’s acceptance of their relationship being public but unwilling to break the moment. And when the lab techs returned and he attempted to withdraw, she held his arms tightly to her stomach, claiming him for a moment longer. 

To put him to a final test -- for really, would either of them accept the experiment as successful without a concluding assessment? -- Jemma engaged Lincoln as a provocateur. As she she had been interested to discover as their relationship progressed, Jemma rather enjoyed Fitz’s jealous streak. She could have predicted it, based on his little flares of temper throughout their friendship, but it still surprised her. In another man she’d have worried about such possessive behavior, yet in gentle, respectful Fitz it was endearing and, often, arousing. 

So when Fitz entered the kitchen as she and Lincoln were giggling over tea, Lincoln waggled his eyebrows pointedly and said loudly, “Jemma, you’re practically glowing today. Have you been experimenting with fluorophore again?” 

In her periphery Jemma could see Fitz freeze, one hand among the snack bags where she knew there was at least one chocolate kiss. She could imagine his thoughts at the moment: _Flirting using poorly constructed scientifically-based pickup lines? But that’s_ our _thing, Jemma and me!_

“Oh, Lincoln,” she said with a light laugh, “you know as well as I do that fluorophore lights up upon excitation. Like--”

“Like from an electric shock?” Lincoln grinned, sending sparks between his fingertips. 

They were really pushing the boundaries of what inaccuracies Jemma would permit, but it didn’t matter, because Fitz had turned on his heel and strode right over to where they sat. Jemma barely had time to squeak his name in mock surprise before he’d grabbed her by the tie she’d taken to wearing again, pulling her off her stool and slightly up onto her tiptoes as he kissed her fiercely, slanting his head to gain better access and holding her tightly with one arm around her waist. When he set her down a full minute later, she looked up at him dazedly, bringing a hand to her swollen lips. 

“Point taken,” Lincoln said in a strangled voice, clearly fighting laughter. 

Fitz nodded determinedly and left without whatever he'd come for before Jemma had a chance to catch her breath. She wasn’t even sure if Fitz had found the chocolate at all. 

“Well, that went better than expected,” she said in a higher voice than normal, turning to Lincoln. They both laughed and clinked tea mugs. 

Unfortunately word about Fitz’s toe-curling demonstration reached Coulson and he called an end to Jemma’s experiment. “Next thing you know they’ll be horizontal on a lab table--” he muttered to May, who just gave him a withering look and left the room. 

“I’m going to miss these guys,” Fitz said fondly that evening as he lay on Jemma’s bed, unwrapping the last few chocolates he’d rounded up. “It was a good run.” He popped one into his mouth and let it melt on his tongue.

Jemma snorted and rose from her position beside him. She pushed open her closet door and pulled out another five bags of Kisses, throwing them to him. 

“I wasn’t sure how quickly the effects would be evident, so I was well-prepared.” 

“All mine?” Fitz gasped dramatically, sweeping the bags to him with both arms. 

Jemma flopped back on the bed next to him and watched him fondly. Then he looked at her with what he obviously thought was a devilish grin and tore open a bag. “I can think of a good use for these.” 

He’d never before actually eaten the chocolates before kissing her, so this time when he pressed his lips to her cheek and her pulse point, she squirmed at the stickiness he left behind. She didn’t chide him for the mess, though, as he was unwrapping the next candy and seemed determined to get creative.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth there as well!! 
> 
> Chuck AU is still happening I promise -- going to try to finish Love, Jemma first and then get back to that!! Plus agentcalliope and I have something super exciting coming down the pipeline :) :) I WILL KEEP TEASING THAT FOREVER


End file.
